Rotten Tomatoes Under Fire After PR Firm’s Scheme to Pay Critics for Positive Reviews Uncovered::A new report details how a PR firm paid off critics to post positive reviews of 2018 drama Ophelia on Rotten Tomatoes, prompting scrutiny over the reviews aggregator.
There is a profit motive to polish turds and therefore someone will be bending/breaking rules in this area. It’s surely just a question of how much and how often.
I think if the site is popular enough it will be a target for shills.
How does something like, say, Wikipedia avoid this issue? Is it because Wikipedia focuses on factuality whereas critic reviews are inherently qualitative/subjective?
Honestly, Wikipedia doesn’t avoid this. People constantly game the rules to remove or change content that doesn’t suit them. I recall an instance where employees of a company were busted editing that company’s page, they were caught because there were so many different editors all from the same corporate IP. And that’s just the low hanging fruit that makes the news - I would wager there’s 10 instances that never get noticed for each one that people spot.
I don’t see why they can’t add that to its page. Document the corporate ips as part of a section on attempts to self-editorialize their wiki articles.
Edit: add them to a Wikiverse-wide digital wall of shame to immortalize their deceptive efforts